In order for the U.S. Soy industry to better understand significant issues that will impact the aquaculture industry, visiting key seafood events on a regular basis to learn what the seafood industry is paying attention to and meet with key stakeholders in a central location is important.
USSEC Director, Aquaculture Colby Sutter and USSEC Aquaculture Program Lead Technical Consultant – Southeast Asia Lukas Manomaitis traveled to Brussels, Belgium for the Global Seafood Show, one of the largest annual seafood shows.
Key meetings took place at this event with the major aquaculture certification organizations, Best Aquaculture Practices, Aquaculture Stewardship Council, and GlobalGAP. It is crucial for USSEC and the U.S. Soy industry to interact with these certification schemes, as they will have a major impact on how aquaculture feeds are certified for export seafood products produced through aquaculture. USSEC needs to ensure that the U.S. Soy Sustainability Assurance Protocol (SSAP) program is seen as a valid sustainability certification in the eyes of these organizations and accepted as part of their sustainability efforts. Ms. Sutter and Mr. Manomaitis also met with other aquaculture equipment and service suppliers, notably Aquanetix, which provides a data management and analysis solution for aquaculture. USSEC’s Southeast Asia Aquaculture program is testing this service with the intent to see industry, particularly feedmills, use this data collection and analysis to better understand the value of high quality feeds using U.S. Soy.